Opera Glasses and Popcorn
Someone has scratched on a wall inside the National Library [Baghdad], ”Hu-LA-gu Khan has returned and knocked on our door once again”.
spinning the war…
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An Opera Glasses and Popcorn view of Politics and the Assembled Multitude...
Marisacat -
- Real independent observations on current events with a particular fondness for the follies of the Big Box Blahgers.
Deflates bloated egos like a champion fencer in a balloon warehouse.
- Alan Smithee
Marisacat -
"...polish on a mud wallow"
- Meteor Blades [May 24 at Mcat]
Marisacat -
"... doyenne of donkle deconstruction"
- Who is IOZ [January 2 2007]
Marisacat -
"... hardened professionals and their primary strength lies in their being completely unconflicted."
"... the primary difference is that on the level of criticizing other blogs and bloggers, they can actually do some damage."
"... Not what I look for in a liberal blog product."
- peeder - MLW, Daily Rant [3.24.07]
Democracy NOW! / Amy Goodman Electronic Intifada / General Content Press TV / Middle East News Press TV McClatchy Headlines The Real News Reuters / Politics
on one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.
If you click on La Louche the picture or the words, it leads to the Amazon PayPage, a way to ... oh let's say help with the cat can deliveries.
Thanks to all who made the very kind suggestion.
Marisacat 
there is no spinning empire, let along murder.
But they keep trying.
But maybe I’m too primordial. I still get mad at the tiger.
CSTAR … oh, I understand. I really do (and I don’t get what it has to do w/ being “latin” either).
I have a hard time concentrating on what dubya says. Just as I’ve learned to tune out worthless commercials, I see him as just another used car salesman I suppose. Buy this war!! On sale now!
there is IMO a cute mini update in th hsu thread… not actually hsu relted but a cute clinton essay from NRO
I’m offended at the end of the last thread because Madman brought up his “jelly” again. If he were a library book, you’d better believe that I wouldn’t bring him back. Won’t somebody SAVE OUR YOUTH ?!?!
:p
Off to watch the youtube-ery from the last thread. Can’t do so at work.
Am drinking a vodka fizz, light on the sugar. I hope Silber will approve despite it being inferior vodka. 😉
there’s no such thing…
I haven’t watched a Bush speech since the 2004 election. There’s no reason to raise my blood pressure when I read whatever he said, should I so desire. And while I can understand MitM that he behaves like the scorpion on a frog crossing the river, he still sends me into a rage. At least when Clinton spoke, though I knew he was full of shit, it was good watchin’.
From the previous thread, Politico comparing Code Pink to the Fred Phelps Klan.
This is actually a very good thing. It shows how brittle and how fragile the pro-war consensus is. If they have to demonize any opposition to the war, it means they’re not confident at all about keeping it going.
Good for Code Pink.
Let’s piss off the Vichy Dems even further by quoting Mao.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch02.htm
I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, an army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy. It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.
I’m a masochist, what can I say?
God, it’s painful watching Jon Stewart killing McCain’s ass.
oops … KISSING McCain’s ass .. freudian slip, anyone?
Well, it’s New Deal vodka, lucid. Make of that what you will. If I’d been feeling especially extravagant, I would have looked for the “Victory” brand.
Me, I don’t think of Bush as a “tiger.” Bush is more like a vulture. Even his worst atrocities and cruelties are engineered by others. There really is nothing on upstairs when you watch him speechify, unless he’s talking about a con being sizzled, of course. Then it’s a whole other ballgame.
I suppose that makes most of the DP either assistant vultures or fleas on vultures. Either way, they’re no damn good and I find them by and large just as repulsive as Bush.
I think you misunderestimate Bush ms_xeno. He enjoys what he is, and he revels in the chaos he creates. Vultures are opportunists …. which he may have been once, but no longer. He creates the corpses now.
I was struck by this.
Not to get too deep into pychoanalyzing Our Great Leader, Madman. Still, I think that Bush without the family name and all the perks that go with it would just be some mid-level manager in some insurance company, Baskin-Robbins or AAA sports team somewhere. Beloved by nobody but the higher ups for his tracaibility, and the occasional opportunistic sycophant down below. Hated by everyone else for his incompetence, bullying, and overall shallowness.
He’s only a stellar predator because others groomed him for it and keep helping him track the prey. It’s what makes the ten-minutes-hate fests at so many liberal-Left blogs so annoying to me. Bush is largely a monster of this size because so very many people were happy to let him grow, so long as they could get in on the kill and the reward money, too.
The DP faithful HIDE behind that sonuvabitch. They HIDE behind the Right Wing. It’s their eternal excuse for having no pride or self-respect other than at the most superficial level. Margaret Kimberley in Mcat’s last thread is absolutely correct. Without Bush, they won’t know what to do with themselves other than sit down in a corner and mumble to themselves about who-knows-what. Their only hope is an even uglier smiley-faced monster snatching Hillary’s prize from her at the last possible moment. Then they can put off the day of reckoning that should have come to the DP years and years ago off for yet another term.
Code Pink seeems to have let a couple of vicious right-wing trolls take over their comments section in their blog.
http://codepinkdc.blogspot.com/2007/09/codepink-women-among-those-arrested.html
If you want to see misogyny combined with not so subtle appeals to vichy liberals to seperate themselves from the anti-war movement, this is the place to look.
First they came for Code Pink…
well… new revelations bring Hsu’s recent net worth to be $70 million. Scammed of course… How much of that has been funneled into democrat hands?
Oh look, Teacherken seems to have weighed in over at the Code Pink blog:
I love that bit about how “mainstream suburban soccer moms” apparently have more important votes than other women do.
What groups like Code Pink fail to realize is that this war, and many other issues, are decided by the votes and sensibilities of more mainstream suburban soccer moms and middle of the road politicians like Chuck Hagel and Jim Webb.
So you said in 2002. So you said in 2003. So you said in 2004. So you said in 2005. So you said in 2006. So you’re saying in 2007.
You Vichy Democrats have done nothing to stop the war in Iraq. On the contrary, you’ve enable it. You’ve prolonged it. You’ve got blood on your hands.
I think you should shed the pink garb, leave DC and head to a shopping mall in Omaha and try to convince some of middle America that this war is a failed endeavor
I think you should go to Iraq and bring a sack of food and medicine to some dying Iraqi children jerkoff.
What groups like Code Pink fail to realize is that this war, and many other issues, are decided by the votes and sensibilities of more mainstream suburban soccer moms and middle of the road politicians like Chuck Hagel and Jim Webb.
poor teacherken. Who by the way, and not sure if they are image googleable, as he has advised the DP (he says it is in his capacity with the teachers’ union and he does not charge… hmmm) has cleaned up his act. years ago longer hair and a beard. last photo he posted (stopping by at some rep’s office) short hair, beard gone, etc.
But in the POV on the Camden 28, it was stated that it was Nixon Meese and Mitchell, who decided they should go to prison for years (the jury disagreed) and those three, Nixon Mitchell Meese, decided to “destroy the Catholic left”
That would not happen if they did not feel threatened by civil disobedience.
Poor teacherken. He has not figured out why the FBI spied on Quaker peace groups recently.
I am sorry ignorants like teacherken teach and two, advise. Anyone at all.
but not surprising.
POOR TEACHERKEN.
REv
I think it is just as likely he is a money launderer. Or a funnel for money laundering.
LOL I find the Resenman story at least suspicious.
I WUZ ROBBED, I swear!
well, to clarify, I don’t know if the commenter really IS teacherken (it was posted anonymously) but he/she sounds just like him.
Mainstream soccer moms? I guess that’s to distinguish them from portuguese and brazilian soccer moms in New England.
I’m unsure whether or not to be charitable to Wanker Ken.
1.) The charitable interpretation would be that he’s making the intellectual error to think that foreign policy is the same as domestic policy, that there isn’t an iron clad pro-war, pro-Israel, right-wing bipartisan consensus that makes it impossible for you to oppose the war in Iraq the way you’d oppose the privitization of social security.
2.) The less than charitable interpretation would be that he’s acting out of some sort of misogyny. The only people who seem to have the balls to come out and oppose the war are women. Ok, you get an occasional Reverend Yearwood or the Iraq Vets Against the War but, for the most part (and as a white male I can speak to the shortcomings of my breed with some authority) white middle class men really ARE impressed by military rank, really ARE impressed by the fruit salad on Petreus’s chest, really ARE uncomfortable around strong emotions. As liberal as he thinks he is, when he’s backed into the corner, Wanker Ken will find that he’s just another Freeper telling Rachel Corrie Pancake jokes. Why? Because he took 9/11 as an personal insult to his manhood and can’t admit it.
teacherken, pastordan and MB should start their own blog; Nice Guys Finish Last. Sheesh, what a bunch of assholes. Not a pair if the three are combined. They should be sentenced to watching and listening to the Dixie Chicks “Not Ready…” until they get it. Code Pink, Sheehan, and to a lesser extent MoveOn are tryng to stop a war and these jerks waste time critizing the tactics of Code Pink and that they aren’t mainstream. Maybe I should go over there and tell him directly.
It’s interesing that the Media Matters post didn’t actually condemn Politico’s comparing Code Pink to the WBC. They just repeated it and let their right-wing trolls go wild in the discussion thread.
I’d check out Atrios to see if he’s given Politico a wanker of the day award but why bother. I know he hasn’t. Good ol Duncan isn’t going to defend Medea Benjamin any more than the Social Dems in Germany were going to defend the Commies.
And, speaking of masturbation of the “mutual” sort.
Marisacat–Alas, Teacherken’s type is all too common among the ranks of public school teachers everywhere: middle-of-the-road middle-class middle-ranking mediocrities whose job is not to free minds but to imprison them. Teacherken is the sort of person who cages a wild bird and tells himself that he’s done the animal a favour, since it will now have a longer life than it would ever in the wild. Which is true, of course, but who wants to live a long life in a cage when you could fly?
It’s the job of the public schools to cage minds, not free them, and most of the teachers implicitly understand their job and do it quite well. Teacherken reminds of the “social studies” teacher who told my son, “Democracy is fine as long as it’s not allowed to go too far”. Thanks for the civics lesson, coach.
And yes, I’m testing the WordPress spam filters to see if they like the letter “M”.
That whole Code Pink thread ends up proving my point. You have miles and miles of Savage-esque boilerplate, likely all from the same person. Then you have the obligatory Vichy bleating about how much they HATE the war but still it’s icky to get all emotional and stuff in front of Our Leaders.
[snort]
Really, the Vichy Dems are concerned about the feelings of the Savage Clone (I suspect all that spew was one extremely underemployed individual, though I could be wrong) and they’re concerned about the feelings of poor old Petraeus. It’s just actual activists whom they can’t abide. I noticed that the tsk-tsker had nothing to day about the emotions of the retro-red-baiting and misogynist commentary. As usual, passion is the God-given right of the FOX-loving crowd and not to be questioned or confronted. However, Lefty displays of passion are invariable grounds for a ritualized knuckle-whack from the Great Ruler of Moderation.
I also treasured the whinge from Savage, Jr. about how Code Pink should be protesting against attrocities in Darfur. Yeah, right, Fuckhead. Like you’d ever have heard of or cared about Darfur if there wasn’t fucking oil there. Get a life.
I am probably slow to get to this…
Whom the gods would destroy, they first give large petroleum reserves….
24
actually teacherken always struck me as more admin and union rep than even a smidge of commited teacher.
Tho assholes in all ranks, ”classroom teacher” as well….. and really he is too close to DC, for all his DP advising blather. Sadly.
gah.
In a way, the Vichy liberals are as immune to learning from history as Bush is.
In 2002 they Vichy libs were all going nuts about the fact that some protests were led by Answer. They were posting hit pieces at places like Salon about how if you were against the war it probably mean you were unwillling to “let the sanctions work” (snort, the sanctions had been in place for 10 years and worked well enough to kill Iraqi children) and that you supported Milosovic.
OK. That was 2002.
It’s now 2007 and the war is still going on and the Vichy libs are still bleating about how the left is going to alienate the “mainstream”.
Bleh. These Vichy libs always attack anybody who’s actually willing to fight. They attacked Dean in 2003 for daring to state the obvious (catching Saddam didn’t make us safer). They attacked Michael Moore in 2004 for being too damned effective. They attacked Cindy Sheehan in 2007 for saying that the emporer had no clothes.
Anybody remember the old movie 1776 when the delegate from New Hampshire says that the Declaration should be edited so as not to be so offensive? And John Adams threw his hands up in disgust while Franklin just sat there with an amused look on his face.
That guy was the original Daily Kos “moderate”.
But in the end, even HE signed the damn thing.
I have yet to see one of those &&%$% who rail against Code Pink offer any way to get real attention about what’s going on in your country besides banging out crap via a keyboard.
I should add that maybe if they weren’t so damn busy begging for money for kos, the “fellows”, Bowers, Stoller and the next star fainting goat Dem while falling all over each other to hand out troll ratings, they might actually have time to do something constructive to take your democracy back from the criminals in the White House and their criminal accomplices in the senate.
Well, Admiral Fallon is hopelessly behind the times. I’m sure that in his day, “sychophant” and “ass kisser” were insults, but in the Bush administration, they’re listed on one’s c.v. under “job skills”.
I never did understand the US Congress. Trot somebody in a uniform in front of them with a bunch of miniature pie tins pinned to his breast, call him “general”, and they fight over who gets to fellate the fellow first (yet more alliteration). It reminds me of the General Clark supporters and the people who are disappointed in that jellyfish named Colin Powell. Their worship, and ultimate disillusionment, obviously stems from the fact these men are GENERALS. As if the military is full of macho men who are going to shield the weakling civilians from the brown men with the turbans and beards.
Guess what? Petraeus never saw combat before he went to Iraq in 2003. Never saw combat in his previous 29 years of military service, although, like Il Kosolini, he wore “combat boots”. And you can hardly call it “combat” when you’re a general, since you’re not on the front lines. I wouldn’t want a general commanding me who hadn’t actually experienced combat as a line officer.
So much for the great field commander and junior Julius Caesar. The man’s a glorified file clerk, but of course you can’t tell the Congress nor most of the American people that. It’s a good job Colonel Sanders isn’t still alive, or he’d be easily elected President.
Oops. Wrong link.
in the senate = in the congress
Although that probably was an accurate Freudian slip anyway.
It’s a good job Colonel Sanders isn’t still alive, or he’d be easily elected President.
lol…at least everybody would have a chicken on their plate (albeit a greasy one).
Those “pie tins” remind me of Boy Scout badges.
#24 – ST — for me this says it all:
The Final Letter of Herzog’s Concise Sunday
Truancy has no single cure. Students skip school because of illness, to work, to care for younger siblings or infirm grandparents, because they have become disaffected or for more nefarious reasons — drugs and other criminal conduct.
-Harold O. Levy and Kimberly Henry in the Times Week in Review
Dear Harry and Kim,
Students skip school because American public education is boring, creepily nationalistic, inherently totalitarian, and indoors.
Your friend,
IOZ
well I did call the 10 floor law firm I was at:
The OVersized American HS I never attended
LOL I learned quite a bit about America there…
Catnip, I’m fairly certain that one of Petraeus’ decorations is for learning how to kindle fire and another one is for helping old ladies cross busy intersections.
Startling and depressing fact: Gifted students only comprise 5% of the public school population, but account for 35% of all dropouts.
When your best and brightest want no part of your school system, you have to ask “why”. The introduction of standardised testing regimes, in which teachers become drill sargeants who “teach to the test”, is quickly bleeding out whatever oxygen remained in American public schools.
As Marisacat has pointed out many times, this is not an accident.
Well there you go, ST. He probably has two for tying (testimony in) knots too and another one for being a Bush sockpuppet. I believe that one has poodle hair attached to it.
Startling and depressing fact: Gifted students only comprise 5% of the public school population, but account for 35% of all dropouts.
That’s because those particular US Americans never got those maps they were promised.
#21 HC white middle class men really ARE impressed by military rank, really ARE impressed by the fruit salad on Petreus’s chest,
Interesting observation but I think it might extend further than middle class or even white to working class and minority men as well. Can’t think of a corollary in women. They may envy physical attributes of other women, but they don’t stick them up on pedestals so much as they attempt to emulate them. At one time in dress and hair style, later make-up and today visits to cosmetic surgeons and gyms. No wonder I enraged so many clarkies by referring to him as “shiny four stars.” I was attacking their distorted egos. hmm – will have to think about this more, or not.
As somebody who’s travelled in Latin America, I have to say that the term “US Americans” is actually quite accurate.
Latin Americans go nuts whenever somebody refers to people from the USA as “Americans” (as if all Americans were from the USA).
They want you to use the term “North American”.
But that doesn’t really work either. How do you tell Americans (people from the US) from Canadian (people who have good beer and good healthcare)?
They’re both North Americans.
But US American. Perfect.
that’s a devastating grafitto, marisa.
but I think it might extend further than middle class or even white to working class and minority men as well
Maybe in the 60s but most of the working class men I know are FAR, FAR less militaristic than the liberals at the DK.
And minority men? I’ve been to a million white anti-war marches and a million black anti-police brutality marches (in NYC).
Bring an American flag to a minority run anti-police brutality march in NYC and you’d get your jaw busted. Bring an American flag to a march full of white liberal “antiwar” activists and they’ll salute.
Hair Club’s right. My first flat in California (Culver City) was an all-black building (I was the only white guy living there…and no, not all British people are white…), and I didn’t see a single US flag decoration on Fourth of July or Memorial Day.
I went to Santa Monica for Fourth of July, a town that has a liberal reputation but actually seems like sort of a three-dimensional version of DailyKos (sorry, Santa Monica fans, but it’s Yuppie Central), and flags festooned everything and everyone.
I long ago realised that most black Americans have a much clearer vision of what this country really is and its “values”. Or, as Muhammed Ali said when he declined to “serve his country” in armed combat in Vietnam: “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.”
I did support Milosevic. He tried to keep a sovereign country together with an incredible socialized infrastrucutre in the face of multinational corporations clamouring to western governments that they wanted everything privatized, and western nations in response propping up ultra-nationalist, former Nazi elements of the multiethnic state in order to foment a civil war.
Call me an unreconstructed Stalinist. I don’t care… 😉
I did support Milosevic.
In order not to offend mainstream soccer moms, I must distance myself from you and reiterate my support for the KLA and it’s military head (Muhammed al-Zawahiri, brother of you know who).
Or, as Muhammed Ali said when he declined to “serve his country” in armed combat in Vietnam: “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.”
funny he had no problem with a sicko war monger white boy hanging the presidential medal of freedom around his neck last year.
I was gagging. I have to assume he is non compes mentes and the wife runs things.
I was ashamed of people who went and accepted it, and stood on the stage with Bremer, Myers, Tenet and whoever else.
45 wu ming…
thanks, I used it once before, a long time ago… and unfortunately forget where i found it.
that was me. i had a couple of interesting AP classes but all the honors courses just meant the riff raff wasnt there. I was a “troublemaker” so they said but they put up with me because i blew the standardized test out of the wate and bumped up their average getting them more money. except math. taht was battle of the vietnamese kids. i was ranked highest in the state on one bullshit test. I skipped the legal limit my junior year. onemore abscence and i would fail. i missed a 1/3 of the year and got staright As. I was going to doa GED and just get out but my friends convinced me to stay. I would hate my self for missing prom they said. PFFFFFFFT. During one disipline visit the prinicpal told my mom that flat out I was beyond them and there was nothing they could really do for me. And those damn AP classes screwed me. It placed me out of intro classes but the money grubbing university made me take upper levels to fulfill their requirements.
where i was headed with this ramble was that in the early 20th century it was not uncommon for 15-16 kids to go to college. i want to blame the boomers for being so populace that the PWTB had to create a rigid 12 grade daycare system to handle all them.
And much of college wasnt better than high school. I had some classes where the old geezer was teaching the exact same lesson plan he been doing every semetser for 30 years. I have actually learned more watching a hour long Discovery show in the 90’s than i did in a semester at university.
insomnia rears its ugly head and rips the nightcap off of it…..left for work at 645 this am, returned home 945pm….and now I’m a combination of exhausted and overstimulated. was barely able to follow the news or any blogs today.
I guess I need a…fellowship? or that creepy green butterfly that makes it all better?
I was very lucky. My 1st and 3rd grade teachers were very good & would encourage students who showed a desire to learn. In 2nd grade, I lived in Belgium and went to a Flemish speaking school [my parents choice, there was also an English school], so I learned another language as opposed to reading from ‘Dot and Kit went on the see-saw’ books. My 4th grade teacher sucked, but that year, the South Bend School Corporation opened up a series of ‘alternative’ schools at which children were allowed to work at their own pace. I was immediately enrolled – that lasted until 6th grade. 7th grade sucked, because I was so far ahead of everyone else & everyone wanted to beat me up – literally my mom picked me up everyday because people were actually chasing me away from the school. 8th Grade I was in the Montgomery County system in suburban DC, which is largely recognized as the best in the country. I was accepted there – and that is when my Dad also started taking an active role in my education – specifically on politics and history stuff – with heavy reading lists. Back in SB for high school, they jumped me 2 years ahead in math and allowed me to take lots of ‘independent study’ type things. It was a good high school with quality teachers, many of whom were happy to indulge me. They all got a bit worried and contacted my parents when at 16 I got very depressed, lost God & started acting out – though I still aced any test given. But when I was a senior & wrote explicit things about drug use in my journal for my creative writing class [which was taught by the teacher who also taught my AP English class] – she never contacted my parents – to her credit she realized that so long as I ‘performed’ I should have the freedom to explore whatever I wanted to. Incidentally, she was Lisa Germano’s Aunt, the sister of both my next door neighbor & the man who was my first violin teacher.
I ended up a hippie-dead head with long hair that hung out with the stoners by the tennis courts every morning during homeroom & the Valedictorian. Fancy that in 1990.
If I went to public shool now though, I’d probably be a 16 year old drop out…
Missed this one when it came out:
“It is past time to make Iraq’s the world’s problem, not just our own.” Joe Biden
Dear Joe,
We broke it and the world would appreciate it if you would stop trying to make it their problem. You owned it when you voted for the IWR. Stop being a whiney weenie like GWB and clean up your own mess.
I think I’m pickled liver [in a can that is]…
Sorry – screwed up the link:
Biden
#50 Marisacat–that was then, this is now. Ali got old and he got soft. I don’t know what goes on in his head, but the Ali of the 1960s was something to behold, both as a pugilist and as a man.
I am old enough to remember the 60s – and Ali, as well as Cassius Clay.
Bush pandered to him, big slobber. Sadly that is what most things turn to, drool.
Revisionist, I already guessed that about you. I missed quite a lot of school (not much university, though) as well, and my marks were always higher when I didn’t attend regularly. Two or three days a week was enough for me; any more than that, and I became bored and obnoxious (atypical adolescent behaviour, I know).
I rather liked university. I didn’t much care for my fellow students, so I used to hang out with the professors and argue with them. The head librarian at our university ruled with an iron hand and insisted on a broad range of newspapers and periodicals, and it was there that I began to become a political progressive. I had a wonderful professor of English literature who was a “liberal Catholic” (they do exist), one of those able to claim he was a faithful RC while questioning just about everything about the Church. In another age, the Inquisition would have dug out his fingernails and put a hot poker to his privates.
But I suppose the main thing I liked about university was that we didn’t show up every day like it was a job. In those days, if you attended lectures or not, the professors cared not one bit. Come if you were in the mood to learn and don’t bother if you didn’t.
The head librarian at our university ruled with an iron hand and insisted on a broad range of newspapers and periodicals, and it was there that I began to become a political progressive.
Was he/she a “tag” librarian? 😉
(Who the hell are these “tag librarian” people??)
Yeah, it was sad to see what’s left of Ali used as a prop for an oxygen waster like Bush. I sometimes wonder if the 60s leaders who got killed weren’t spared a lot of humiliation later in life; poor old Dr. King might have had a stroke and got wheeled around to GOP conventions, where he’d be parked under a “I Have A Dream: Tax Cuts!” banner. Horrors.
At least Ali has an excuse: too many punches to the head and a wasting disease. What’s everybody else’s excuse?
Well worth reading: Despite Backlash, Many Jews Are Questioning Israel
Via the American Conservative: Long Division; The brewing confrontation with Iran isn’t just about nukes or neoconservative ambition. It’s about regional hegemony.
one of the ways i was a trouble make was that i would just read the fucking syllabus and figure out how the grade was calculated. tests or papers. you know sometimes a paper would be 60% the 20% tests etc. i just did the minimum i needed to. i would just hand in exams right after a test would start with just my name . not do papers. not to busy work. read edgar rice buroughs novels during lectures. or just doodle. sleep whenever possible. then get As on their finals and finish them in like 10-15 minutes. it would really throw the “teachers” for a tizzy and upset them.
i dont think it was some authorattive thing but that it made a mockery of their abilities amd methods.
I have a comment in spam dealing with my public shool history…
As for college – good as well. Went to a quaker school where the policy was live and let live & the education was top notch. We smoked bongs in front of the administrative building in the middle of the afternoon. When the main pot dealer on campus [a friend of mine] was hauled before the Dean, all that was said was, ‘the local cops are on to you & I can’t protect you’. We had a paradise of an arboretum to run around in & a library stacked with everything… I was a librarian for my last three years. I was the assistant to the Special Collections Librarian. That meant that I got to hang out with all of the medieval, leather bound books & order videos every summer for upcoming classes. Fun, fun.
I really do have to give props to that school – the Kremlin on the Crumb Creek… most famous for a weatherman cell that broke into a certain FBI office in Media PA, and liberated certain papers pertaining to the COINTELLPRO program…
Product! Product! Who’s got the product?
Doesn’t every generation think its somehow worse off than the last one in many ways? hekebolos whines about being “strapped”. I’d like to think that those under 35s would realize that people of all ages are having a hard time right now. They seem to think the “boomers” found nirvana and are just sipping margaritas by the pool while pointing and laughing at the poor, struggling younguns. My biggest beef with the younger generation: a sense of entitlement – in too many areas.
Back in the day…
Fuck Hekebolos.
In other words, he doesn’t want to work hard but he wants to be paid well. Fucking Yuppie.
He’s single and moving into a flat with his girlfriend. No kids and a university education from UCLA (with no student loans to repay) and he’s complaining?
Hm, how about a single Mum who’s got a couple of kids and has to work two or three jobs–and still can’t make ends meet? Think hekebolos or his brother have any sympathy for that woman? I doubt it.
Or try this: a university graduate who had to join the Army because he couldn’t find a proper job with a liberal arts degree, and because he had a wife and a young son to support.
That was me.
one of the ways i was a trouble make was that i would just read the fucking syllabus and figure out how the grade was calculated. tests or papers.
Yup. Once you knew how to game the system and figured out what the profs wanted, it wasn’t that difficult. That’s the main thing I didn’t like about college & university.
And he works for the family company, ST. Maybe he should ask for a raise??
they are lucky. when i entered the work force you still had some greatest generation then a huge layer of boomers who hadnt started to retire. you knew when you took a job that you would never move up. computers finally saved us since the boomers knew nothing about them and some were sadly (well really not) made obsolete.
i do feel sorry for younger people though because inflation will hit them harder than it did us. when i was in my 20s you could get decent apartment for $300. Now that same place would go for $900-1200. My Jetta was like 13K the same model now would cost you $26. The salaries havent really kept pace
eugene, the “60s expert”, is a blithering, whiny idiot:
catnip that was high school i was referring to.
but yeah thats how you should do college. in college since there can be 200 people in a class a prof doesnt really care about all that nonsense.
thats how i did so well on standatdized test. 2 obvioulsy wrong answers. 1 kinda right and the correct one. simple elimination for most of them.
one aspect of college i enjoyed was that there was less peer pressure and you could show up others in your class. actual adult competition. rather than fucking up the curve for the basketball jocks.
I should also add, that the school had an ‘Honor’s Program’ for juniors and seniors, in which I enrolled. Basically, you took 2 intensive seminars each semester – that was your only course work – you got no grades, but the students were responsible for conducting class, which lasted for 3-4 hours, depending on how heated the discussion got. And at the end of those 2 years, your entire standing at the college depended on written and oral exams given by professors from other colleges, who’s only knowledge of the seminar was the reading list. And those reading lists were killer… My Shakespeare seminar – every play & sonnet & just about every major piece of lit crit on them. My 19th Century Philosophy Seminar, Kant’s 1st & 2nd Critique, Hegel’s Phenomenology & Philosophy of Right, Feuerbach’s book on Hegel, Marx’s Kapital, German Ideology, E/P Manuscipts, and assorted readings, & several books by Nietzsche, along with accompanying critiques of these positions spanning 2 centuries… All in a sememster. I spent 50-60 hours a week reading, and couldn’t begin to get to all of it…
But it made grad school damn easy.
Have you ever bothered to ask why that is? Could it be that the economic policies you unabashedly support have decimated this country over the last 30 years? Could it be that this is not the responsibility of the ‘boomers’ but of a calculated plan, hatched since the time of FDR, to undermine any socialized program undertaken by the US government – funded by the deepest of deepest pockets in this country?
Could it be that your white, priveledged ass is more concerned about watching TV on your Plasma, driving your sexy car & buying your new i-fon to realize that we’ve been increasingly reverting to a feudal society for 30 fucking years?
God Dammit. That comment I made the other night about my older friend and I sitting in Max Fish commenting on the idiocy of this generation rings more true every day…
Hey motherfucker, work! If you can’t get a job ‘consulting’, why not try waiting tables, or bartending. If I get in trouble, I have no problem with getting a job detassling corn. I’d rather do that than starve.
And I’d certainly do that before I beg for money on the internet.
there really was a sad period in the early mid 90s when the early boomers got put out to pasture. they just didnt have the skills anymore. and we xers were hungry and glad to see them go. i remember some of them faking it and others desparatly trying catch up. i used to have to fax for one lady. she would try to act busy and get one of us lowlings to do it but she just couldnt work the machine. i saw her try to work it for like15 minutes one day before just giving up. i helped her when i could. she also kept a typewriter n her office and typed everything instead of using the computer.
Boomers grew up in small houses, maybe two bathrooms, most with two or more siblings, one TV (black & white for the early boomers), one phone, wore hand-me-down clothes, walked or rode bikes to school, from about age ten or so on, mowed lawns, delivered newspapers and/or babysat to earn pocket money, save for college or help out the family, etc. The schools, for white kids, were better than what poor Eugene got but it wasn’t the boomers than put Reagan in office as Gov of CA and he’s the one that started the back to basics (three R’s) trend in schools. Eugene and his friends would be shocked to see that boomers did not grow up in affluence with a lot of things. We also had that little problem of a war and draft that he should be grateful that we did get rid of. God, he’s such a dweeb.
poor eugene. and he teaches that shit. As thereisnospoon and hekebolos demographically record the same shit.
Marie – my parents were pre-boomer. I was the last of the last from a ’50’s family. Their parents were adult midwest depression survivors. We didn’t own a color TV until 1986, we never had cable, 50% of anything we made doing childhood labor like paper routes & grass mowing went immediately into an untouchable savings account. From Middle School on, I had to pay my own public school fees each semester. And at age 16 every child in my family was required to get a job. It wasn’t a choice. To be honest, I now don’t think these things were bad. They taught me lessons [which, of course, I’ve generally ignored because I’m a generous motherfucker that is terrible with money when it comes to my friends]… they taught each of us to always be independent economically regardless of circumstance.
And should any of us lived at home after age 18, we would be charged market rent. And to this day, if any of us borrows money from our parents, it is at whatever the current bank market is. My parents have made several thousand dollars off of me since I built my studio…
Code Pink’s theatrics won’t do anything to sway anyone. All they do is allow already like-minded individuals an outlet for cheerleading.
I know everyone commented on this already, but is there a reason for anyone to listen to a word these people have to say? He also said they get out of their pink garb. I think we might get somewhere if everyone got into pink garb and went and helped these people who are actually doing something.
Boohoohooman in his diary yesterday, which really shook the place at Pff, btw and brought out a few timid kos defenders and a couple of wagging fingers, pointed out beautifully how kossacks mocked the only man in the presidential race who has ever actually done anything to stop a war, Gravel.
As HC pointed out above, it is five long years later and no matter how well they behave, or dress, or wear their hair, they are still called radical leftie hippies by those they are most trying to impress. We never needed these people. They are and have been in the way for far too long.
Miss D. hope you get some sleep ….. sounds like a long day!
Ms xeno, love your descriptions, they are so, well, graphic! Lol!
I haven’t read that thread re Code Pink, but maybe if a pile of Kossacks went over and thrashed the righties, instead of the women who are doing something, it woud be helpful, instead of wagging their fingers.
That was one thing I did notice when I first went to DK, that they never, ever took on rightwingers. They attacked only democrats. It would probably be very encouraging to those women if people went to their defense in those threads.
My 2nd job in NY, 1995, executive secretary for the Director of The American Hospital of Paris Foundation [god awful right-wing funded thing who’s primary contritributors seemed like the first order of hell – Sanford Weill being one of them]. She couldn’t understand how the mouse related to the cursor on the screen. I tried, and tried, and tried to help her understnad how to type memos & do e-mail, but she could never understand that simple thing – the little arrow moves when you manipulate this thing in your hand.
She made 6 figures. She liked me because I made good coffee.
Hekebelos is quite the dandy though. Kinda kid who’d go to Saville Row to get a head to toe nerd pocket made.
Trying to tie a few loose ends before the weekend….
That denali or wtf scrren name is some relentless vacuous troll on PFF. I just don’t see how they do it. I mean even if you were paid
Which brings me to another observation about hekebelos. i followed a link to an Elise thread wherein he gave the explanation that “whoops” he was posting on his brothers screen name. So many masks, and they’re meant to facilitate infecting others …
Also, I noticed a few predictables ranchhands listed for Buhdy’s pony barn. I figure half of the “left” half of whats left of the half assed “left” blogosphere ARE Paid Ops of one sort or another.
Meatloaf on Sunday dude.
denali is a asshole from what I observe. I don’t comment at PFF but if I did I would be staying away from him.
I commented last week he is either a fluffer – or zelig. Constant comment. Not the tea either…
BHHM – I will say this, and only say it once. Individuals put up the money for Buhdy’s place. I hope they don’t get screwed, but there was nothing outside there.
I know this. Like we all know the lines on our hands.
I don’t intend to participate there, as noted in previous comments.
But don’t assume.
lucid – pampered kids with disengaged parents grow up to be like GWB. Eugene is just pissed because he had lousy parents who happened to be boomers. Either they didn’t have enough money to financially pamper him or they told him to make his own way, and he’s pissed. From that he’s extrapolated to indict an entire generation.
With TV parenting bacame idealized in this country and not all that many are lucky enough to have good parents. I do worry about the children born in the past couple of decades. The level of materialism that they are going up with is totally unsustainable. Not sure that solid core values can be learned at an early age when so much of their lives are revolving around stuff. They go to birthday parties and come home with “goodie bags” with more stuff than what the birthday boy or girl received for gifts four decades ago. If Eugene had a rude awakening when he became an adult, this latest generation is going to have it even harder.
81 Sabrina I have a bit of a follow up fomp to that from yesterday.
Heres a little preview tho I don’t know if I’ll have it up for a few days…
“Even though I don’t bog on MLW, I am much amused that the
jismgist of my last piece on the pervasive Dailykos / Demmocratic Party denialism of their Fascist enabling was lost like so many lost pearls of wisdom down the open blouse of Elise.For the first time yesterday I felt the raw power yielded by heaving her tits online. I think I may have accidentally killed Gravel in the Bronsky.”.
pearls of wisdom
LOL… that reminded me of this, an intrepid soul sent it to me earlier.
thats is pretty common for the 6 figure folks.even today. my last job dealt with that level…They were still living in 1984… we couldnt simply email one document to the boss. we had to print it out, then FAX it to him China. Then CALL China to make sure the hotel got it and that it was being delivered to his room. What a waste of money.
with the older men its usually because they are used to having a girl do everything.
he also had someone on staff who dealt soley with updating his phone list. it was like 50 pages printed out and he carted it around. they all looked at me funny when i suggested that he simply access it on his laptop.
he once called us in from London to have someone call london information and then call his dinner date in london and let them know he was running late once again at a huge expense when he could have just called down to his hotels front desk. and in less time.
he also didnt trust fedex. we would spend $7000 on flying someone to london and back to deliver something we could have just sent electronically anyway.
…shit, my Dad told me recently that I’m so good with my payments, that they actually factor them into their monthly retirement budget…
well I think that is called “billing the client”…tho, it was years ago that smart clients began to pick apart bills, parse them and bitch.
But there is always the patsy client, or some other sweetheart entanglement, where the bills are just shot thru the system.
Speaking of “Kids and Money”
What is so ridiculous about Eugene and the Brothers Darrell bashing “Boomers” (this sounds like a meme created and polled at the Brothers Darrell consulting firm) … is that they are of the Reagan Kids generation that voted and pushed the country to the right dismantling the FDR Saftey Net…. just cuz Raygun lied and said the their parents money was going to “Welfare Queens”.
Kos is the first to knock unions and was very pleased the Jet Blue “didn’t need no stinkin unions”…. now they are crying in their teacups because they are too stupid and weak to hold on to the legacy’s the “Boomers” made for them…. idiots. Just as Elise and her stupid ass crew are dismantling the protections women before her have made.
DHinMI has a FP promoting the breaking up of Iraq…. right on time the mother fucker… this is what was planned all along. Gee… ya think this will be the new “messaging” coming from the Dems…. CROOKS AND LIARS
The Backup Beard:
So now we know where Hiliary is going…. she does not plan to make a “better war” just to divide the country and rule over the “oil bits”.
What is quite interesting about DHinMI DLC funded and polled “theory” is quite manipulative (as always)… they are now shifting the debate to appease the left and are now saying:
Hmmm… that is like saying the only way to get the ketchup out of the bottle is to smash the bottle to smithereens.
Of course DHinMI nor Meteor Beard discusses that close to 70% of Iraqis NO NOT WANT THEIR COUNTRY DIVIDED. Nor does the fabulous duo extrapolate that dividing a country will only compound the violence and insecurity. Oh but wait… when the Southern US States decided to succeed from the UNION…. their was instant peace….
No it makes sense why Hilary’s “Boys” ie Obama and Edwards have recently come out so pro Bring the Troops home…. I geuss the rest will be in Edwards second 2 minute commercial… about breaking up Iraq for the good of our troops.
CROOKS AND LIARS
Any one who says “Kos bashing” is not relevant… must not be paying attention. All the Dem Party trial balloons are set off at the site… it is a window into the inner workings of the Democratic Party Politburo.
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Those two guys are justa coupla pumpsteak assholes.
DH Dana Houle of Hodes office is going to get more than, shall we say, a little “exposure”.
h … (2+ / 0-)
Recommended by:
DHinMI, echatwa
…Mesopotamia doesn’t look like the Iraq I know.
“When shifting paradigms, it is important to put in the clutch.” — Patricia Limerick
by Meteor Blades on Thu Sep 13, 2007 at 07:58:36 PM PDT
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Mesopotamia is the land of the 2 rivers… (0 / 0)
not the two rivers, the Nile and some parts of Asia minor
by Jon B A P on Thu Sep 13, 2007 at 08:09:52 PM PDT
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That’s Why “Mesopotamia” Isn’t Written… (0 / 0)
…over the Nile or the Levant, but over the Tigris and Euphrates basins.
The revolution will not be televised, but we’ll analyze it to death at The Next Hurrah.
by DHinMI on Thu Sep 13, 2007 at 08:33:15 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
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Shoving off..
Gee last I looked Iraqis were Persian… NOT ARABS…. but hey according to DHinMI all “towel heads” are alike.
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Well one thing is for sure the coming Dem Foreign Policy will be as reckless and ignorant as the GOP policies.
off to work, just have to say that it pisses me off that headlines today are stating that Bush “approved” Petraeaus’ recs.
He’s the fucking Commander in Chief, not a goddamned middle manager.
HE ORDERED IT.
God I hate the fucking stenographers.
Yowza, what a festival of small brains and big mouths dispensing incorrect assertions based on a profound lack of knowledge. If it’s not eugene on the the Boomers and the Sixties, or Elise/Miz L on feminism, it’s DHinMI on Iraqi history and culture.
if I were a Christian I’d be floundering on the floor shrieking “HELP me JEEZus! HELP me!”
Shadowthief, where’s that asteroid? Any news?
SV, no. 15,
Aren’t you glad you never had teacherken back in secondary school? Aren’t we all?
And this is just a guess, but I’d wager that Code Pink includes a number of people who at one time or another have been employed as teachers. I’ve known quite a few in my life, and can think of more than a few who’d probably join CP if they were still alive (the ones I’m thinking of were retired 60-somethings when I knew them back in the 70s, people of their generation had a lot more integrity and adherence to principle than the likes of teacherken and his doppelganger Mediocre Blades, self-proclaimed radicals morphed into suburban sellouts). That idiotic smear, i.e., “professional, upper-middle class activists,” is a label more appropriate to yourself, kennyboy. I think what really boils your blood is the idea that these people have the guts to actually do something other than break wind on the Internet.
Marie, no. 22,
teacherken, pastordan and MB should start their own blog; Nice Guys Finish Last. Sheesh, what a bunch of a**holes
Good idea, bad name, since as you correctly note, they aren’t nice guys. I’d name it “Wanking Through The Revolution.” That’s how they pass their lives, after all.
Also, when was the last time teacherken got himself down to a mall, whether in Omaha or the DC suburbs (which is where he lives), and tried to convince the hoi polloi that the Iraq war should be ended? If he did, he’d probably be surprised to find out that a hell of a lot of those people don’t need convincing, in fact given the preponderence of service personnel and GOPeratives from all over the country in the DC area, Omaha might have a lot more war opponents than Woodbridge, VA or Bethesda, MD. Anyway, these people are actually doing something, kennyboy, practice what you preach, and stop spouting DC-centric talking points as if you’re a “heartlander.”
JJB: Aren’t you glad you never had teacherken back in secondary school? Aren’t we all?
You got that right. I had a couple of teachers like him. One of them was a pompous old ass who told me at his retirement party that he loved everything about teaching, except the students.
I had a prof in college who was similar to eugene. He was a pompous young ass. In class he would read Victorian poetry aloud and move himself to tears. It was all I could do to keep myself from leaping up and running out of the classroom, screaming and tearing my hair. I skipped his class a lot which pissed him off to no end. He tried to make life miserable for me because of it, but he couldn’t do much because I wrote such good papers.
Oh look, here he is. * shudder *
Shadowthief, no. 33,
Giving that sort of deference to generals is not something that’s done only in America. Britons, French, and Germans are all guilty of the same thing. One need look no further than the parliamentary inquiry into the Jameson Raid to see how British politicians and their wives swooned before a law-breaking imperialist of a macho man in a uniform, or the Dreyfus affair and the lionization of Hindenberg to see how the French and Germans were (at one time anyway) prone to insisting generals possessed admirable qualities they obviously did not have. The same can probably be said for most societies.
It should be noted that back when the US Army was a very small entity, it did produce some outstanding individuals who performed great service to their fellow citizens both in and out of uniform — George Marshall, Joe Stillwell, Bradley, Eisenhower, even (arguably) Macarthur. Of course in those days you didn’t expect that your service career would be followed by a cushy position as CEO of a defense contractor whose bidding you’d done throughout your career, or that you could end up with four or five stars on your shoulders without every having taken part in combat, or spent years at some godforesaken place in the middle of nowhere commanding large numbers of soldiers. The last few generations of top brass were paper pushers and briefcase carriers like Petraeus, Powell, and Al Haig, who got to his lofty position by kissing the rear ends of both Doug Macarthur (during the Korean War) and Henry Kissinger (Vietnam, Cambodia).
I just found out that Jim Webb is coming to our local Dem Committee fundraising dinner to schmooze. For a few hundred bucks I can get a ticket to the pre-dinner reception where we are to meet and greet him personally. It’s almost worth it to be able to buttonhole him and put him on the spot about his reaganite conservatism, warmongering, and sexism.
Several of D Throat rescued from Moderation, with snips from sub threads at Dkos… (sorry!)
Off to check Spam file now..
8)
Any one who says “Kos bashing” is not relevant… must not be paying attention. All the Dem Party trial balloons are set off at the site… it is a window into the inner workings of the Democratic Party Politburo. —- D Throat
there it is in a snapshot.
It is the Democrats pushing to break up Iraq… Biden was all over Dem hustings summer and fall of 06 pushing it, he got Harold Ford jr to push it in TN from his campaign stages and a couple of others to do so as well.
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ugh I caught an awful charlie Rose last night, one segement was Fouad Adjami with George Packer.
At one point Charlie demurred slightly iwth some utter crap Fouad was pushing (Packer was his usual lumpfish self) and FA pulled himself up and said,
well THIS WAR is being run from the heartland and from the South, regions of America with different values.
I wanted to break something.
one of SV’s released from Spam… think she ws replying to JJB…
sorry!
Good morning, campers. I’ve come to enjoy these threads to an almost indecent degree, especially in the early morning hours (being of early to bed, early to rise, no alarm necessary blood). I got a kick out of eugene’s analyses of the evil Boomers and their unseemly love of gainful employment. Spouse and I are midboom babies, now raising kids from whatever generational tag Time or Newsweak editors deign to assign.
As for Bushwatching? I can’t do it. His maunderings enrage me to depths I never thought I could plumb – not so much him, a type I remember well from college (overprivileged and undertalented daddycashers, bane of private education and boon of private education’s coffers) but at those who installed him to make them money and ignore (or, in GWB’s case, actively attack) the common good.
And Mcat, thanks for the info on IOZ. You may possess the best blogroll on da Tubes.
Amusing shenanigans from “Robert Plant” at PFF:
It’s hilarious how insanely secretive and sneaky these DK minions are.
I’m so glad I’m not them.
Sorry, I forgot the open tag…. 😛
peeder claims victory for pffers over affecting Docudharma’s editorial policy.
from this seat in the orchestra, based on my brief read yesterday, i thought catnip and sabrina were doing most the heavy lifting on that matter.
from this seat in the orchestra, based on my brief read yesterday, i thought catnip and sabrina were doing most the heavy lifting on that matter.
Well, you know me – serial blogwrecker and all that. 😉 Just living up to my reputation.
new thread
LINK
Geez, they’re a bit late to the party over there at dkos. It’s news today (top of the rec list) – a “bombshell” even – that the Kurds made a deal with Hunt Oil?
LOL 121
nip nip nip nipnipnip nip nip…
Chinese Canadian water torture – Long Island (sabrina) stabs in a lightning charge from the left
Allow me to correct DHinMi and Meteor Blades’ “facts” about Iraq.
I have access to a top-secret database–but I can trust you lot with the link, I hope–that reveals the history of Iraq:
Top secret database to which Dana Houle and the Beard do not have access
In other words: the Iraqis are heirs to one of the world’s oldest civilisations, and developed highly complex societies when our own ancestors were picking fleas off one another and scratching on cave walls.
Gosh, I wonder if the Iraqis have a shared sense of culture going back 6,000 years and the ability to actually build a fully-functioning society if Europeans and Americans stop meddling with them. Naw, it couldn’t be…the Iraqis are just savages. Yes, that must be it. No one with a brown skin and no McDonald’s can really claim to be “civilised”. I’m guessing many Iraqis don’t even have basic cable.
So I guess the information in my top secret database must be wrong. Now that’s a puzzlement.